


Yashahime Rewrite AU

by loveyou-x3000 (Severa)



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, 半妖の夜叉姫 | Hanyou no Yashahime | Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Editing is almost non-existent here because I'm basically just letting everyone see how I plot, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship: SessRin, Freeform, Gen, No Ayame, No SessRin, Sesshomaru the Protector of Children, Yashahime Rewrite AU, rewriting Yashahime because I hate it, so excuse any garbage in here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29407761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severa/pseuds/loveyou-x3000
Summary: An archive of aTumblr bullet point seriesreplotting and rewriting the events of Yashahime.This is currently a freeform format, but may eventually be adapted into a proper fanfiction one day. NOT intended to be a prompt for free use.
Relationships: Higurashi Kagome/InuYasha, Kagura/Sesshoumaru (InuYasha)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

**INUYASHA & KAGOME**

  * Sesshomaru warns InuYasha and Kagome about Kirinmaru, and what must be done to protect them.
  * Moroha is barely a few months old. Kagome is devastated. InuYasha does his best to keep it together.
  * They consider entrusting her to Sango and Miroku. But they already have plenty of mouths to feed, and after a long discussion with their friends, it’s ultimately decided that they’ll be leaving the village and returning to Sango’s old home. It will be safer there after the fallout.
  * The well has been closed for over a year now. There’s no taking Moroha to her human family. And Kaede is too old; she’s already taken Rin in, and she hardly needs a demon hybrid child biting at her aching heels.
  * And as for Rin—she’s far too young to take on a child, in Kagome’s opinion. InuYasha doesn’t argue. The farther their daughter is from Sesshomaru, the better.
  * Besides, Moroha doesn’t just need caring for. She needs protected, too.



  * InuYasha is the one who suggests talking to Koga. The pack culture if the wolves would protect her, and she’d be among demons who’d have no choice but to accept her.
  * After some consideration, Kagome agrees.



  * So InuYasha goes to see him. Alone. Kagome stays behind to work on sealing Moroha’s demonic nature, and Sesshomaru has agreed to stay near the village. She’ll be safe.
  * (And Sesshomaru has been acting strange lately, but InuYasha ignores it. He tries to swallow down all his worrisome thoughts and focuses on what matters instead.)
  * He arrives at the den and Koga berates him for not bringing Kagome with him. But once the reason for his visit is revealed, the heckling stops.
  * InuYasha and Koga talk for _hours_. It’s the first time they’ve been relatively normal with one another — Kagome’s absence likely being a contributing factor — and InuYasha ends up telling Koga more than he planned to.
  * He tells him about the well. About Kagome’s origins. About Sesshomaru. About what he knows about his father, and about what he knows about hanyo children.
  * (About himself, sort of. What he can remember from being small.
  * It’s not easy talking to him like that. But for Moroha, InuYasha will do anything.)
  * Koga ultimately agrees to take her in, but not without commenting on the situation.
  * He wonders, quite rudely, why he’s decided to drag Kagome into the mess with him. Kirinmaru doesn’t care about her; she doesn’t need to fight him or be sealed by Sesshomaru. She and Moroha should both come to the den—he can protect them until InuYasha is released. It’s the sensible thing to do.
  * (For the first time, the word “mate” never leaves his mouth.)
  * InuYasha tells him he tried convincing her of that already. But Kagome won’t leave him to face this alone. She’s stubborn. She thinks they might be able to find a way around getting sealed, if the situation is right.
  * (She’s too optimistic.)
  * Koga suggests forcing her to come. He’s her husband, after all. She should listen to him.
  * InuYasha laughs in his face, and Koga laughs with him.
  * But he does say something worthwhile before InuYasha leaves. He asks about the well: about why it closed in the past, and about why it reopens. What causes it?
  * InuYasha shrugs and says it’s always opened when it needed to, and stayed closed when they had to stay where they were.
  * Koga wonders if it would open now, if he needed it to? If it was safer for them on the other side?
  * InuYasha leaves with that thought rolling in his head like a thundercloud.



  * The storm simmers in his mind for weeks.
  * The night before Kirinmaru comes, InuYasha and Kagome meet with Sesshomaru at the Tree of Ages. He’s taking Rin away from the village to somewhere where she’ll be safe. He neglects to mention where that is.
  * Rin says goodbye to Moroha, and Moroha gurlges and kicks her tiny little legs. She pouts when he best friend is gone.
  * Together, they watch Sesshomaru go.
  * They linger for a while in the clearing after he’s gone, enjoying the night sky and the pleasant weather. Kagome sits on the edge of the well with Moroha, and Koga’s words drift through InuYasha’s mind.
  * Would it open, to save their lives?
  * A chill breeze rustles by. InuYasha takes off his robe of the fire rat and puts it around his wife and daughter. Moroha blows spit bubbles and giggles at him. He wipes her mouth with his sleeve.
  * For a while, InuYasha stares at his daughter and thinks about his Mother. She looks like Izayoi—he’s always thought so, anyway. She would have loved her.
  * Kagome asks him what’s wrong just as a stray wind swirls down into the bottom of the well and back up, disturbing the air in its dark depths. Bringing up the scent of old wood and dead bones, dormant yoki, cold floors and—
  * _(pink and blue and purple, starlight and magic and time; reality extended, retracted, suspended—)_
  * The strange scent of a roaring city beyond a quiet shrine.
  * The well is open again.



  * When InuYasha kisses Kagome, he knows she’ll never forgive him. When he touches Moroha’s cheek, he hopes she won’t hate him the same way he used to hate his Father.
  * He kisses her little forehead and feels his heart turn to stone in his chest.
  * But he doesn’t need his wife’s forgiveness. He doesn’t need his daughter’s love.
  * He just needs them to be _alive_.
  * So when pushes them backwards down the well — when he betrays them — and watches magic surge and swell and settle, he doesn’t expect to be forgiven. He doesn’t expect to be loved.
  * And when the well closes again with Kagome and Moroha safe on the other side, the aftermath feels exactly how he expected it to:
  * Lonely.
  * Cold and awful and _lonely_.




	2. Chapter 2

**KAGOME**

  * Kagome goes through all the stages of grief on the other side of the well. It’s just like the time she was trapped after Naraku’s defeat, except a thousand times worse.
  * For a while, she sinks into a deep depression. But Moroha needs her, and that keeps her going.
  * She stays at the shrine. Her mother and her brother help her with Moroha, and her grandfather has her working the shrine during the day.
  * That, at least, reminds her of home.



  * Once every three days, Kagome checks to see if the well has reopened.
  * It remains closed.



  * For a while, Kagome searches to see if there’s anyone in Tokyo who lived to her age. It’s a minor obsession, sometimes leading to all-night research sessions on the internet.
  * But she never finds Shippo.
  * She never finds Sesshomaru.
  * She never finds Koga.
  * And she never finds InuYasha.
  * (But one of them does find her, one day.)



  * Four years after the well closes, Kagome wakes in the dead of night to the feeling of tremendous yoki and colorful power.
  * Moroha feels it too, but Kagome orders her to stay inside as she dashes out into the courtyard in her pajamas, chasing after the aura.
  * It feels like InuYasha.
  * It feels like the power of the well.
  * _(Like the waters of time, like the hitch of magic deep in her belly, like the warm sensation of falling through reality—)_
  * And in the bushes next to the Tree of Ages, she finds a terrified white haired girl that does feel like InuYasha…
  * But only in the way that InuYasha feels like Sesshomaru.



  * Kagome adopts Towa without a second thought. Moroha is elated to have someone like her to play with.
  * Towa doesn’t remember much. She remembers her father’s name, and she talks about having a twin sister and an older sister.
  * But whenever Kagome asks about her mother, Towa frowns and shrugs.
  * It’s something Kagome wonders about often, because Towa’s energy is like Moroha’s. Part demon and part human—but not equally balanced.
  * And there’s something about her aura that feels familiar… and _dark_.
  * (Like a spider crawling in the night. Like purple miasma and black despair. Like the meidou, vast and open and endless.)
  * Kagome tells herself it’s because of Sesshomaru.
  * And that lie is comforting.



  * Moroha and Towa become best friends, and despite their inclinations towards violence, they tend to even each other out.
  * Kagome teaches them both to keep their nails trimmed short and to mind their abilities at school. She has them fully convinced that she can seal away their demon abilities forever if they misbehave.
  * She’s not sure that she can, but they aren’t brave enough to test her.
  * They excel in sports. Moroha is partial to math in a way Kagome never was. Towa buries herself in history books.
  * Both girls know the stories of their fathers and of the past. Moroha has a picture of InuYasha she keeps close. For Towa’s fifth birthday, Kagome hires an artist to draw a likeness of Sesshomaru that took them months to get just right.
  * It’s enough to help her not forget what her father looked like.



  * They both receive scholarships to a private middle school.
  * It doesn’t go unnoticed that no one applied for those scholarships.
  * The teachers claim they did it on the girls’ behalf, but Kagome isn’t convinced.
  * Again, she starts looking for her friends…



  * And again, she finds nothing.



  * On their fourteenth birthday, Kagome visits the well, as she always does, and finds it still closed.
  * She’s leaving the well house when Mistress Centipede — _the_ Mistress Centipede, who should be dead and gone and dust and bones — comes bursting forth from a portal on the Tree of Ages.
  * Kagome purifies her with a burst of reiki so bright and powerful that it wakes Moroha and Towa from a dead sleep.
  * They’re running out to their mother just as Kagome kneels down in the dust, dazed by the sight of green and black armor… By the appearance of an unconscious young man who looks too much like Miroku.
  * By the sight of Hirakotsu laying silently at his side, a rosary of purple beads wound about his wrist in a fashion that reminds her too much of her childhood.
  * Of her _friends_.
  * Just as Kagome brushes ash out of Hisui’s bangs, someone levels a naginata at her throat.
  * Towa screams Setsuna’s name.




	3. Chapter 3

**KAGOME**

  * Moroha barrels face-first into Setsuna because _that is her Mom_ and _you don’t fuck with Mom._
  * They go tumbling and there’s a scuffle, but they eventually back away from each other. Towa gets in between them and Kagome is yelling for everyone to stop fighting.
  * The yelling rouses Hisui.
  * And even though it’s been fourteen years — even though Hisui was still _so small_ when InuYasha pushed them down the well — he still looks up at Kagome and says her name in awe:
  * “Aunt Kagome?”



  * Everyone congregates at the kitchen table while Kagome tries, very admirably, not to completely lose her shit.
  * Setsuna doesn’t remember Towa, but Towa remembers Setsuna. Setsuna doesn’t seem to remember anything at all, in fact.
  * Moroha is just fascinated to see more people from “her” time, even though she’s very much a modern girl.
  * After Hisui tells her no one’s seen InuYasha since they disappeared — that he might be dead — Kagome calls everything off for the night. She sets Hisui up in the living room for the night.
  * Towa wants to stay up, but Kagome banishes both her and Moroha back to their shared room. They have school in the morning, she says, though she’s already fully aware they probably aren’t going.
  * Setsuna insists she doesn’t sleep, so she leans against the living room wall and closes her eyes for the night. Resting. Guarding her friend.
  * It reminds her of InuYasha sitting at the door with Tessaiga against his chest, guarding them all during their quest for the Jewel.



  * Kagome goes to the well house for privacy and calls her brother.
  * At the sound of his tired voice, she breaks down completely.



  * In the morning, she does end up forcing the girls to go to school so she can speak with Hisui and Setsuna without interruption.
  * Setsuna doesn’t seem to talk much, and the conversation ends fairly abruptly when she doesn’t recognize Sesshomaru’s name.
  * When Kagome asks about Rin, Setsuna recognizes her only as Kohaku’s wife; not as her older sister. Hisui echoes that sentiment.
  * However, Hisui ends up being a fountain of information for most other topics.
  * (Either they’re hiding something, or they simply don’t know what Kagome does.)
  * Kagome learns that a fragment of the Ne no Kubi survived and combined with the Tree of Ages. Over the past five years, demons have been emerging from the Bone Eater’s Well. Dead demons, defeated demons, etc.; Kohaku thinks that the Ne no Kubi has control of the well through the tree, Hisui says, and uses it to protect itself. Summoning dead things to defeat its enemies.
  * InuYasha’s forest is no longer safe because of it. Plenty of people have tried to burn or cut down the Goshinboku to stop Root Head, but they can never defeat what it summons to protect itself.
  * (And now they know the Goshinboku can never fall—not if it still stands today.)
  * Sango and Miroku moved back to the demon slayer’s village, but Kohaku has taken it upon himself to protect Edo from the Tree of Ages and the Ne no Kubi. There are others who help him.
  * Setsuna and Hisui are among them.
  * Kagome tries to come to terms with this. To the idea that even if the well could open for her, that her enemies were holding it shut against her.
  * That InuYasha could be dead. 
  * Eventually, Towa and Moroha arrive home from school — far too quickly for Kagome’s liking — and the same chaos from the night before ensues. Towa wanting answers. Moroha wanting to make new friends. Setsuna ignoring them both and Hisui trying to play it cool.
  * He reminds Kagome so much of Miroku.



  * In the end, Hisui and Setsuna stay with them for nearly a year. 
  * Despite Kagome’s obsessed efforts to find a way to get them all back home, there’s simply no way to bend time to her will.
  * Until there is.




	4. Chapter 4

**KAGOME**

  * Buyo is stuck in a tree.
  * The Tree of Ages, to be precise.
  * No one knows how he got up there. It shouldn’t be possible for him to have gotten up that high. But he won’t stop meowing and the shrine-goers keep letting Kagome know that there’s either a cat (or a very angry cat spirit) screaming up in the tree branches, so Kagome puts the kids to work.
  * The Mission: Get Buyo Down from the tree.
  * The Players: Moroha, Hisui, and Towa.
  * The Exasperated: Setsuna.



  * There are too many people around to just jump up and get him down, which both Moroha and Towa are more than capable of doing, so the three of them decide that instead of trying to find a ladder, it would be smart to stand on each other’s shoulders and try and coax Buyo down that way.
  * Setsuna watches from the sidelines as Towa puts Hisui on her shoulders. Moroha climbs up the both of them to stand on top of his.
  * They have a small audience as they stand and cartoonishly sway back and forth trying to reach the yowling cat. They sway precariously forward as Moroha _almost_ reaches him-- he’s _just there_ , her claws brush his fur and she braces herself with her other hand on the tree...
  * And when her claw slips into a notch in the bark, she gets zapped with a burst of reiki that feels like lightning.
  * Their human ladder tumbles to the ground as Moroha is blasted back from the tree, falling and skidding face-first in the dirt. Towa and Hisui rush to her side just as Buyo jumps down from the tree and into Setsuna’s waiting arms.
  * Her hand is badly burnt and Hisui rushes off to fetch Kagome. Setsuna pets the cat as Towa tries to help Moroha. The burn isn’t healing quickly, like it should. Her skin is smoking slightly and her claws are all blunted to human-length nails.
  * When Kagome arrives, she takes her daughter’s hand in hers...
  * ...and feels the sealing energy that had once held InuYasha.



  * It’s the ghost of Kikyo come back to haunt them again.
  * Five centuries ago, her arrow had sealed one of the most powerful hanyo of her time to the trunk of the Goshinboku. In the fifty years that InuYasha had remained in stasis, her power had leaked into that tree. Become one with it, like a parasite living unnoticed in its host. 
  * And when his daughter had brushed by it - when her power had felt his blood, his energy - the angry ghost of a dying Kikyo had lashed out. 
  * Luckily, Moroha was only minorly affected, being as human as she was, but the sealing energies that remained in the tree were powerful enough to seal the yoki in her hand. It was nothing Kagome couldn’t undo (Moroha’s claws were back and her skin healed within the hour), but it did leave a question in her mind.
  * Why was Kikyo’s power making itself known now?
  * Kagome knew in her heart that the Goshinboku was no more or less important than the well. There had been many nights she’d nursed Moroha at her window and stared at the wear mark that InuYasha’s shoulders had left in the tree, missing him.
  * Remembering when she’d called to him through the tree, back when old moth demons had risen against them.
  * But ever since she’d come here with her infant daughter, the tree had been silent. The well empty. Except for Setsuna and Hisui’s appearance in her world, the past had remained just that: the past.
  * But now...



  * Once all the teens are settled for the night, Kagome goes out to the Goshiboku. She meditates before it, like Miroku taught her how to do, and places her hand on the bark of the tree.
  * After some time of searching, she finds Kikyo’s faint string of energy--sees it stretch and pulse and shimmer in her mind’s eye like the thread of a spider’s web shining in the sunlight. 
  * She follows the thread.
  * She follows it back and back and back...
  * down and down and down...
  * deeper and deeper and deeper...
  * Until the night is silent and the sky is black. Until the stars are gone and there is only that pink thread, only the dark, only the rage and anger and betrayal of Kikyo’s every dying breath...
  * _Naraku and InuYasha and sealing arrows and jewels and pain, pain, so much pain.... So much heat, so much blood... All of it burned away-- everything, gone. Purified in the flames of endless fire..._
  * Until she finds the ghost of Kikyo, and the ghost of Kikyo finds her.



  * They said nothing to one another, because there was nothing to be said.
  * That Kagome could see a sliver of Kikyo at all was enough for her to understand what had happened that day.
  * There was a piece of her soul still in the past. The smallest, slightest sliver of her own soul that Kikyo had sacrificed to ensure InuYasha would be forever sealed. A binding that only she could loose him from.
  * Which was exactly what Kagome had done.
  * But that sliver had not returned to her upon his waking. It had remained in the tree, forever tethered to the past. 
  * An anchor point.
  * And if she pushed herself through the tree--extended her reiki, her consciousness, and her soul--she might be able to reach it yet again.
  * But in a different time.
  * She might be able to carve out a path for someone to follow. To overwhelm and protect them from the Root Head’s attacks. To force the portal that had brought Setsuna and Hisui here to open yet again.
  * She would have to stay behind to keep the portal open, but at least she would be setting something right.
  * And when she asks Setsuna and Hisui if they would like to try, they do.



  * It works.
  * In the dead of night, Hisui and Setsuna sneak away from Moroha and Towa to meet Kagome in the courtyard. 
  * After an hour of silent focus, the portal opens.
  * (Through her connection, Kagome can feel the night breeze she missed so much ruffle through her hair.)
  * Hisui swears to her that they’ll defeat the Root Head so she can come back. Setsuna nods in agreement, and thanks her for her efforts taking care of them.
  * Hisui says he’ll give his parents her love. Setsuna bows.
  * Kagome says she loves them both, and tells them to keep safe.
  * (She wants to keep them safe here, but they were never hers to begin with. They don’t belong here. They deserve to be able to go home.)
  * And then they step through the portal and disappear.
  * Kagome can feel them along the path she’s created. It’s a slow, winding process, but she hold strong. Even with tears leaking out of her eyes, she stays strong.
  * Unfortunately, though, Towa and Moroha were onto her from the start.
  * And when they come running - armed with full backpacks and stolen weapons - Kagome screams at them to stop. 
  * They aren’t ready for that world. They _are_ hers, and she knows they’re not ready. Not alone. Not without her.
  * But she can’t close the portal to stop them. Not with Setsuna and Hisui still inside it.
  * Moroha is wearing her Father’s robe, and-- _no, please, no,_ they’re not ready. They’re just children. 
  * She can’t lose them.
  * But after only the slightest hesitance, they’re gone. They say they love her and... they’re gone.
  * Kagome is alone.
  * And it’s cold and awful and lonely and...



  * There’s a hand on her shoulder.
  * A hand with two magenta stripes wound about the wrist, and it’s colder than the ice in her heart.
  * And it pushes her forward into time (in the same way another once pushed her back) and the portal sustains itself just long enough to swallow her whole.
  * Just long enough to let her see the striped, crescent-mooned face that pushed her into time--
  * \--and then her path collapses.




	5. Chapter 5

**KAGOME**

  * The portal collapses in a flash of white-pink light.
  * There is only the darkness at first. The image of Sesshomaru seared into Kagome’s mind. 
  * Him, standing behind her in modern clothes, looking like he belonged. But he _shouldn’t_ belong--he shouldn’t be there, not with her, not in her time, not with his children so close...
  * (And she thinks about the scholarships. About the way her family never seemed concerned about money. About her brother’s average scores still getting him into a wonderful university, and about how her less than stellar schooling never seemed to be an issue.
  * But she stops thinking about that as quickly as she can.)
  * Then there’s the shouts of four startled teenagers, and Kagome opens her eyes to look at the world around them.



  * There is the darkness, but there is also light.
  * An image of the Tree of Ages stands in the middle of a mirrored glass floor, its roots stretching down into the dark and its branches scraping higher than she can see. It is made entirely of blue and white light.
  * Between her and the Goshinboku, Setsuna and Hisui are getting on their feet. Moroha and Towa are doing the same, though they’re much closer to her. 
  * When they all see her there, the four of them come rushing over.
  * Moroha and Hisui help her to her feet. Her hands are shaking.
  * Setsuna and Towa are looking around, trying to discern where they are.
  * But Kagome already knows. She knows the _feeling_ of this place.
  * It’s an in between.
  * Like the border of the netherworld or the darkness of a meidou, this place feels like sinking to her. It’s neither here nor there. It’s a place you can get lost in, forever, if you don’t find your way out soon enough.
  * _(It’s the mediou of the Shikon no Tama, where Naraku’s head hung in a spider’s web and Midoriko’s Battle urged her to fight forever.)_
  * And because she knows where they were and where they were going, she understands that this is an in between of _time._
  * An in between for entire worlds.
  * “Stay with me,” she tells them. “Don’t lose each other.”
  * To Setsuna’s chagrin, Towa takes her hand against her will. Moroha latches on to Hisui’s arm like he’s her big brother and takes her mother’s hand, too, while Towa takes the other.
  * Then Kagome takes her first step.
  * (Setsuna takes her first step.)
  * And the whole world changes.



  * Blue light surges beneath Kagome’s feet. In this realm in between, in the place of time, the water-like surface beneath her feet explodes with the same type of light that reflects off a mirror.
  * All their lives are suddenly beneath them, and the images of their past flash plainly beneath their feet.
  * It’s a clash of images; Miroku and Sango, Kohaku and Rin, Sesshomaru and InuYasha, Naraku and Kagura and Kanna, Ah-Un and Jaken, Izayoi and the corpse of a Great Dog Demon. Kikyo. Pink jewels and black pearls. A woman crying; multicolored gems shining in her palm.
  * Kagome tells them to keep walking to the tree, and they do. 
  * As they walk, the world comes to life. Flowers begin to bud and bloom and blossom along the roots of the blue Tree of Ages. A wind ruffles through their hair. 
  * (Beneath her feet, Kagome sees InuYasha kiss their daughter goodnight.)
  * She hopes that they can make it to the tree -- and they can.
  * She hopes that she can touch the tree -- and she can.
  * She hopes that she can find that lost piece of herself, as she did before --
  * and she can’t.
  * Blue and purple butterflies flutter around the branches of the Goshinboku and Hisui eyes them nervously, but says nothing. Setsuna glances at them once and then looks away.
  * (Moroha squeezes her mothers hand as she watches an image of a mansion burning beneath their feet.)
  * “There is no way back,” Setsuna says. 
  * Her sister admonishes her; there must be some way.
  * Hisui and Moroha are silent.
  * Kagome glances away from the memory of Byakuya slicing open her back with a mediou blade, and--
  * “Hello, again,” he says.
  * Kagome looks back to the floor and startles, stumbling back a step and trying to pull the children behind her.
  * Byakuya stares up at her as if trapped inside a mirror.
  * He smiles.
  * “Trapped, are we?”'



  * It’s a realm between realms. 
  * A realm of time and timelessness.
  * A sleeping realm.
  * A realm of dreams.



  * Byakuya never died. He was consumed by a mediou, cut off from his maker, and ultimately faded in the border realm. He ceased to be what he’d been created to be, and instead became what he was.
  * (Like how Kagura became the free wind, Byakuya became dreams.)
  * And now Kagome is forced to face the lie she’s told herself all these years. As she watches Towa lean down and take the bladeless sword that Byakuya offers her -- the sword that stole the energy of the Mediou Zangetsuha, that nearly damned her to eternal darkness -- she knows, in her heart, that the familiarity of Towa’s aura has nothing at all to do with Sesshomaru.
  * But just because she knows it doesn’t mean that it makes any sense.
  * And in the same fashion Byakuya dipped his pommel in the black energy of the netherworld, Towa takes her new sword and dips it in the blue light of the tree.
  * She takes time in her hands and a blade that looks too much like Tessaiga’s forms in her hand.
  * With it, she opens a portal in time.
  * And when they step into the past, Byakuya is gone.




	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse all the jumping back and forth, but at this point you might as well get used to things not being in order. 
> 
> So-- back to InuYasha!

**INUYASHA**

  * When Kirinmaru finally comes, InuYasha is standing in the exact spot where he knows Kagome's house will one day be.
  * (Where she is now.)
  * Sesshomaru is with him.
  * They are standing beneath the torii gates, and it is Sesshomaru who approaches him — who strides across the empty foundation of the Higurashi shrine and stands before him, unarmed, and _stares_.
  * When his claws flex, Kirinmaru speaks.
  * "Before you kill him," he says, and InuYasha scoffs. Tessaiga is singing from its sheath as the old red-haired bastard steps forward, stopping a few paces behind Sesshomaru.
  * (Watching him.)
  * "How did he survive this long?"
  * InuYasha's claws tense around Tessaiga's hilt, but he's not sure what Kirinmaru is asking. Not that it really matters—he's talking to Sesshomaru, whose face is as still as stone. But he speaks. Eventually.
  * "It was Father's will."
  * His eyes cut to Tessaiga. Kirinmaru nods.
  * "And Izayoi?"
  * If his heart weren't already hardened from his betrayals, it would have turned to stone right then. Sesshomaru - for the first time in InuYasha's life - repeats himself.
  * "Father's will."
  * But InuYasha is yelling over him.
  * "Why the fuck do you care about my Mom, you bone-faced bastard?"
  * There is silence. And when Kirinmaru laughs, it sends a chill up his spine.
  * "Because she was the beginning of the end," he says, like that matters. "And it seems his sacrifice was in vain, after all."
  * _The end of what?_ he wants to know. But there's no time to ask. Kirinmaru is moving--past Sesshomaru and across the shrine grounds, straight at him, claws bared, and the Wind Scar splits the sky.
  * A fight ensues, however briefly, until Sesshomaru strikes.
  * He waits until InuYasha’s back is to him, until Kirinmaru is starting to encroach, and when he makes another missed swing - too wide, too far - he makes his move.
  * InuYasha is punched aside (with the hand he’d once cut off) and he grits his teeth against the searing pain of a claw gouging out his eye, and there is light--
  * there is blood
  * and there is a pearl gleaming brightly in his brother's palm.
  * (He remembers the faceless woman. He remembers hoping. He remembers Kagome, brash and beautiful and dumb as hell...
  * ...and he remembers the dark.)
  * The pearl consumes him.
  * And InuYasha, for now, is gone from the world of the living.




	7. Chapter 7

**KAGOME**

  * When Kagome and the kids fall through the other side of time, the blue-white blade of Towa's sword disappears.
  * It's a flash of rainbow colors and then they're tumbling onto uncut grass—Setsuna and Kagome stumbling while Towa, Hisui, and Moroha fall into a dog pile.
  * They have approximately thirty seconds to gather themselves before Kagome feels dread pooling in her stomach. Before Setsuna is staring at the well and holding her weapon ready, shouting at the others to get to their feet.
  * The branches of the Goshinboku sway and creak and groan and there is nothing comforting or pure about its presence.
  * Something stirs at the bottom of the well as a summer night breeze swirls around them, ruffling Kagome's bangs as she gets the kids to their feet.
  * (She has no bow or arrows. There are four children to protect - teenagers, yes, but in her eyes they're children - and she only has her hands and her wits to save them.)
  * She yells at then to them to run as she sees a mass if black hair rising from the depths of the well, reaching like vining tendrils around the hint of a red skull—
  * "Run!" she tells them, just as laughter that sounds like wind chimes drifts up from the black bottom of the well...
  * just as tentacles of black hair rise like a monster from the deep...
  * (Kagome remembers a red skull and a red comb and red lips and a red robe of the fire rat and a bloody full moon...)
  * And then Setsuna shouts and the wind cyclones all around them.
  * (Kagome remembers different red lips. A white fan with red stripes. Red eyes, cutting across time and space and wanting nothing but freedom.)
  * Hisui screams "Hiraikotsu!" and Kagome ushers Towa and Moroha back from the tornado or hair. A few tendrils strike loose from the storm and she purifies them to ash before they can come within arm's reach of her daughters.
  * And then there's another shout above them
  * —the roar of a firecat beneath it—
  * and a sickle blade on a chain strikes the heart of the tornado.
  * Yura's ghost screams in its second death as the red skull shatters beneath Kohaku's blade. When he yanks it back to him, Kagome can see the skull embedded on the point of the blade.
  * It shatters like the shards of the Shikon Jewel against a starry night sky.
  * And when Kohaku flies low on Kirara's back, she doesn't think when she takes his hand.
  * Doesn't think when she settles behind him on the back of the yokai cat that had once been her dearest friend.
  * Doesn't flinch when she sees the tiny lightning bolt scar on the back of his neck.
  * Doesn't breathe when she flies for the first time in fourteen years.



  * The kids run beneath them as Kohaku flies her out of the forest.
  * They land at her and InuYasha's old hut— still kept up, she realizes, because the demon slayers are living in it.
  * (She forces herself not to feel anything at the sight, because she's too worried about the kids to care about the old house InuYasha had built for her.
  * With his own two hands.
  * Sweating beneath a summer sun...)
  * Moroha and Towa break through the trees with Hisui and Setsuna, panting.
  * Hisui knocks straight into Kohaku with an very un-teenager-like hug, calling his name. Setsuna stands close to them both and Kohaku ruffles her hair.
  * Kagome hugs Moroha and Towa close, checking them over. They're fine.
  * Kirara nuzzles everyone, and then ends her affections by shrinking and hopping up on Kagome's shoulder to nuzzle her cheek.
  * There's a lot of commotion that happens all at once.
  * Demon slayers are roused by Hisui's too-fast explanation of where he's been for the past year. Kohaku is struggling to keep up as Kagome is fielding rapid-fire questions from Towa and Moroha.
  * Is this the past? Where they were born? What was the thing that came out of the well? Who was the man in the tree? Where are they? What happened to the sword—it doesn't work anymore!
  * It's a mess, but it's an old woman clearing her throat that interrupts it all.
  * "My my," Kaede says, and Kagome feels her heart swell as she turns around and sees her old mentor.
  * (Her baby sister from another life.)
  * "What a sight ye are."



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow on Tumblr:  
> [Tumblr Post #1](https://loveyou-x3000.tumblr.com/post/643288414872027136/yashahime-inukag-au-i-will-probably-write-one-day)  
> [Tumblr Post #2](https://loveyou-x3000.tumblr.com/post/643512558838480896/yashahime-inukag-au-i-will-probably-write-one-day) **_(NEW!)_**


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